World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called an Emergency Committee meeting on the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has already claimed around 130 lives.

Worldwide, it is estimated that one in five adolescents experience mental health challenges, though most remain underdiagnosed and undertreated. Marking Mental Health Day on Wednesday, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) is focusing on the psychological well-being of young people aged 10 to 14, to stave off conditions that can impact their lives deep into adulthood.

With over 826,000 people affected by heavy flooding affecting most of Nigeria, humanitarian agencies continue to step up efforts to provide life-saving assistance, especially basic medical care, which is essential to prevent disastrous epidemics.

Tobacco giants are adopting new ways and “disguises” to push their products, noxious both for people and the environment, and interfere with government efforts to regulate the sale and use of tobacco, the head of the Secretariat of the WHO FCTC, the United Nations-led tobacco control treaty, has told UN News.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is supporting Zimbabwe’s efforts to begin vaccinating 1.4 million people against a new deadly outbreak of cholera, beginning on Wednesday, after the water-borne disease first surfaced in a suburb of the capital Harare early last month.

Following an “important increase” in the number of suspected cholera cases recently in Yemen, a new vaccination campaign is underway in coordination with the government to prevent a third major outbreak, said the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday.

For 20 years, Doctor Evan Atar Adaha has been providing medical services to the conflict-affected people of Sudan and South Sudan and, on Monday, he received the 2018 Nansen Refugee Award, a prestigious prize given annually by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) to honour the women and men who work tirelessly to provide life-saving help to people caught in humanitarian crises.

“Great progress” has been made in tackling tobacco consumption and saving lives but more needs to be done to challenge the industry’s attempts to “bypass” international regulations, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

States across the world should act now to decriminalise abortion and make every effort to ensure women and girls have the right to make their own decisions about pregnancy, said a group of United Nations human rights experts on Friday, in a statement marking International Safe Abortion Day.